When a food product is packed in a packing container, it is usually desired to work with as few germs as possible, or indeed under sterile conditions, so that the packed product can be stored for a certain minimum storage time without any germs, bacteria or other micro-organisms that might be present inside the packing causing the product to spoil as a result of their proliferation.
In practice, various approaches are known for this purpose. For example, the food product and/or the packing container may be subjected to an inert, sterile and/or bactericidal protective gas or bactericidal radiation before the packing process, though this entails certain disadvantages and, in many cases, a considerable amount of complex technical apparatus, without it being reliably possible to achieve sterile or virtually sterile packing in every case.
The invention is based on the problem of creating a method and an apparatus for packing a material in a packing container with which, to the greatest possible extent, sterile packing can be achieved without excessive design or process engineering effort.